No good (Score 1)

So to the comments in the thread where it's not a big deal, or people will save money.. there's really no positive for sellers, unless they're a business who isn't really going to care.

Sellers do not get paid immediately; funds go into your eBay account, and may be withdrawn, but will take days (at best). I believe they may still be used within eBay, but they are not immediately available for use in the real world, apart from using the funds to ship the product. Want cash in-hand before shipping? You'll undoubtedly receive negative feedback from customers who expect their items shipped for free with 2-day delivery. Yes, the fees are *slightly* lower, overall, but depending on the category, it will be minute. Let's say it was 10% before (fees vary by category), and Paypal had their 2.9% cut.. the new "eBay-only" fee for that category is around 12-12.5%. Less? Sure, but anyone looking at this as a cost-savings to sellers (apart from professional sellers with large volume) is either being naïve or disingenuous.

To those that say that Paypal sucked anyway, and if you're worried about it to just get another bank account.. Paypal definitely sucked, but getting a secondary account only adds issues. If eBay wanted to pull funds from Paypal (and if you're a seller who has been part of a dispute you're no doubt familiar with this) they would at the drop of a dime, and your Paypal account could go into a negative balance. They'll be able to reverse the deposit to the account, but now instead of a negative Paypal balance you could worry about later, you're eating overdraft account fees from your bank/credit-union. And since it's *technically* a valid transaction, you won't be able to do much about it besides figure out a way to fund the account immediately. No, Paypal didn't "protect" you from anything, and I don't expect eBay to be any better, but it was at least a buffer that you could deal with by itself without recourse (though Paypal would send collections after you after several months of negative balance). Also I've already seen comments where "something went wrong" with deposits, and eBay and banks are both pointing the finger at each other, with a seller in between without their cash.

All in all, this is a way for eBay to increase their profitability.. they can collect more fees from customers without *technically* increasing them, and for the time that they have these funds before they're disbursed to sellers will be able to collect interest, which will probably turn out to be a good bit, especially for people who forget they have funds in their eBay account. Honestly, it makes all the sense in the world for them to do this, as they'll make a ton more profit. Most smaller sellers (or at least ones who have been burned by eBay's lack of seller protection) will probably be pretty upset, but there's really nothing to do besides leave for another platform. But is there another platform with the same reach/appeal as eBay? I don't think so, but I'll be looking for it. Larger volume sellers won't care, since they're already dealing with the same deposit schedules from their credit card processor.

I think the biggest takeaway with this is that you shouldn't sell anything on eBay that you're not willing to give away for free. It sounds counter-intuitive, but ultimately the ability for a buyer to receive your goods and either receive an outright refund, or receive a refund after shipping back a box of literal rocks, is astonishingly easy. There's almost no seller protection (I've never had a case settled in my favor, even ones where a buyer was blatantly abusing the system), and for YEARS sellers haven't even been able to leave negative feedback, because "you got paid, so it HAD to have been a positive experience!" But if you take the viewpoint of "this will go into a box and I'll either get some cash or nothing at all" you won't be too bad off; getting shafted on 10% of your sales is probably better than not having any sales at all? Unless you can find a better platform.

If anyone has suggestions for viable alternatives (I don't consider Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace valid, since they have such limited reach), I'd love to hear them, since I really don't want to give eBay another avenue to shaft me without recourse. It's still a great place to buy certain things, but in the past five to ten years they've cultivated an ecosystem that is borderline hostile to sellers, with buyers who are spoiled rotten. It's pretty sad.